Today's post features a recent food demonstration I did at Shady Grove Medical Center to feature healthy recipes for Super Bowl Sunday! The recipes featured included Portobello Sliders with Caramelized Onions, credit to My Darling Vegan's Blog, and Buffalo Hummus, credit to Oh She Glow's Blog. (Click the links for recipes!) Both of these recipes are sooo delicious and get this- they are meat-free and vegan!! While I do not consider myself a vegetarian or vegan, I do recommend eating meat-free sources of protein for at least two to three days per week because they are very lean and rich in fiber, both of which are optimal for heart health!

As you prepare your snacks and appetizers this week for the big game consider some of the following tips so that you can enjoy the game and feel good, too! :) ​

Healthy Eating Super Bowl Tips:

Be mindful:

Choose the foods you would like to eat and place them on your own plate. Do eat from the communal food table itself because it is difficult to track how much you are eating.

Slow down eating: Place fork down between bites, take a sip of water, or eat with non-dominant hand to become more aware of eating.

Control Hunger:

Bring a healthy dish like the ones attached to ensure that you will have some healthy options.

Fill up on fiber- fruits, vegetables, whole grains- will slow down your digestive system to help control appetite cravings. If you want seconds, go back for the vegetables.

Do not skip meals before the Super Bowl. You will likely overcompensate in unhealthy, rich snacks and beverages to make up for the missed meals.

Stay hydrated with water.

Pop in a mint to cleanse your palate and control appetite.

Stay Distracted:

Chat with friends or family during the game. Maybe someone else there is also trying to be mindful about their eating and you could encourage them!

Move during commercial breaks.

Walk around room or up and down the stairs.

Do a set of exercises like sit-ups, push-ups, squats, or lunges.

Stay away from the communal food table during the game/commercials.

Eat this, Not That:

Instead of sour cream, replace with Plain, Non-fat Greek yogurt.

Instead of salt, choose salt-free herbs and spices for flavor.

Instead of ground beef, replace with ground turkey breast or non-meat proteins such as black beans, tofu, or chickpeas.

Instead of soda, replace with seltzer water with a splash of fruit juice like grapefruit, orange, lime, or lemon.

Unsure of what to do with all of the snow? Make your very own homemade Snow-Cones! One of my favorite past times in college was going outside after a fresh snowfall and gathering fresh snow with my roommate and making our own snow cones! (See funny Throwback Thursday picture below!) Luckily for us, we went to school at Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania so we had A LOT of snow cones to eat throughout the winter. As opposed to commercial snow cones, these snow cones are sugar-free, customizable, and are very tasty!

Time is flying and we are already three weeks into January, which means we are three weeks into our New Year's Resolutions! Have you kept up with them so far? If you have, keep going! If you have started to fall off your track, though, you are definitely not alone. By this time, most Americans start to lose sight of their goals and tend to gravitate back into old habits. Be careful, though, because some of these habits may actually be the things that are causing you to struggle in the first place!​I currently work as a dietitian at an outpatient cardiology office. When I meet with clients to help them meet their nutrition goals (weight loss, decreasing blood pressure, learning to eat balanced meals...etc), we identify a lot of barriers that may have prevented them from meeting their nutrition goals in the past. The ones listed below are some of the most common eating habits that I hear about, and they truly do diminish people's ability to succeed!

Think about your own eating habits. Have you done any of these within the past week or month?​

1. Skipping Breakfast.

According to a survey by the Morning MealScape 2011 Survey, about 10% of the United States' population skips breakfast each morning. This is a major problem because eating breakfast helps regulate your appetite throughout the entire day. When we skip breakfast, we are usually more hungry later in the day to try to overcompensate for a skipped meal. This overcompensation will lead to increased calorie intake and will make it difficult to try to lose or maintain your weight. Check out this previous post for quick and simple Breakfast Ideas. If you are not a breakfast person, try to at least have a snack within 2-3 hours of waking up. This snack should ideally have a carbohydrate source such as a fruit, piece of toast, or cup of oatmeal, and a protein source such as yogurt, low fat milk, an egg, nuts, or seeds.

2. Ignoring Serving Sizes.

A major problem in our country is portion control and the want to get "more bang for your buck." The problem with this mindset is that our portion distortion may appear financially valuable at the present, but this could lead to weight gain, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases which we will certainly pay for later. We need to shift our focus on getting the best financial value and adopting a culture that desires getting the best health value.

To find out what a serving is considered, look at the food label on the back of a product. Before reaching into a bag of chips, cookies, pretzels, pay attention to how many snacks are in one serving size. Pour out one serving and place the rest of the bag away so that you are not tempted to go back for more.

If a product does not have a food label on it, you can use several ways to estimate the appropriate serving size for that food. Check out this post on Portion Control to learn more.

3. Drinking Calories.

When speaking with a lot of my clients, a lot of them are very frustrated when their weight plateaus or their lab values do not change when they are eating the correct portion sizes of healthy meals and snacks, and exercising daily. However, once we dig a bit deeper in conversation, I soon realize that their high-energy beverage choices are likely keeping them at this plateau. Sodas are probably the most obvious to come to mind, averaging about 150-200 kcals per bottle. However, some other drinks may be a bit more conspicuous...Juices, Gatorades, Coffee beverages, Iced Teas, Lemonades, Alcoholic Beverages (Wine, Beer, Liquor, Hard Ciders)...etc can all significantly add on calories if you aren't careful. Remember to look at serving sizes for drinks as well, because oftentimes one serving is is only 1/2 or 1/4 of the bottle itself.

4. Eating Your Exercise Calories.

I am a huge fan of mobile food logs to become more aware of the calories being taken in and how much time it takes to burn them off with exercise. The only major problem with most food logs is that the mobile log will tell people that they have earned extra calories to eat because they worked out. Eating these extra calories completely negates the calorie deficit they made by exercising and will cause them to continue to maintain their weight, not lose it. To prevent this from happening, I'd recommend only logging exercise before bed so that if the mobile app suggests eating your exercise calories, you can ignore it more easily than you would if you were half way through your day and hungry. For recommendations about fitness apps, check out my post on my Favorite Fitness Apps that I currently use!

​5. Feeling Guilty. ​​Let's face it. We all feel this way sometimes. Was it the tempting cake at your cousin's baby shower, or was it the second or third piece of pie at Thanksgiving? Sometimes we all feel guilty about overeating or eating unhealthily at times. Making a mistake or two is not the problem. The problem occurs when we stay feeling guilty for long periods and then torture ourselves between strict yet short-lived deprivation of our favorite treats or completely throwing in the towel and giving up on our healthy eating goals entirely. My best advice is to stay positive. There is always another opportunity to eat healthily because we have to eat everyday! So if today wasn't your best, you have a fantastic opportunity to make a change tomorrow, so cheer up and stay positive! :)

After reading the list above, maybe you have identified at least one or two of these behaviors that you've practiced within the past few months. Don't sweat it, we are all human! The good news is that we just started a New Year for a New You!​​Pick yourself up and make 2016 the year that you finally kick these habits to the ground!

I stumbled across the quote above on Pinterest a while ago. Allow this to be your motivation with your goals this year! Print it out and hang it somewhere to remind yourself of how far you have come with your goals so far and how far you want to continue on this path!

Nervous about your keeping up with your New Year's Resolutions? ​Check out my published health tip on "Reset Your Resolutions" for the Adventist HealthCare & You Blog to make sure your resolutions are set right for success!

About Me

I am a Registered Dietitian, Certified Diabetes Educator, and a self-proclaimed foodie currently living in Washington D.C. I genuinely want to help people enjoy healthy eating. I hope that through my blog you will learn a bit more about nutrition, share with me in my love-hate relationship for exercise, eat well, and feel good :)﻿